Church key anecdote

[sagehen]

>A few years ago there was a discussion in this cyberspace of "church key"
>as slang for a bottle opener.  I had never heard the word until I went to
>grad school in Wisconsin, where I heard it all the time.  Nonetheless the
>consensus on ads-l seemed to be that it wasn't a regional expression--a
>judgment that seems to be confirmed by its absence from DARE.
>
>Well, the other night I was at a poker game (which we call "choir practice"
>in the messages we exchange via the college e-mail system in the process of
>organizing a game).  At some point I figured it was time for a beer, and
>finding nothing in the host's kitchen to open it with (and possibly
>influenced subconsciously by the fact that this was, after all, choir
>practice), I asked him if he had a church key.  My question met with blank
>stares all around--nobody had the slightest idea what I was talking about.
>So this scientific sampling of seven guys demonstrated 100% agreement that
>the expression was unknown in the Northwest.  FWIW, all but one of the
>seven are in their 30s, and I think most of them grew up somewhere in the
>NW.  One went to college in Michigan, and I think all the others went to
>Linfield.
>
>Peter Mc.
 ~~~~~~~~~
AFAIK, it was a widely-accepted term everywhere I've lived (Midwest, West,
Northeast). It only applied to the specialized opener of crown caps, I
think.  Not the kind that punches a triangular hole in a can top, or that
pries with a little hook.When I was last a beer drinker (had to give it up
because of allergy to malt) bottlers were using a kind of crown cap that
could be unscrewed.  Maybe the church key has simply become obsolete?
A. Murie

A&M Murie
N. Bangor NY
sagehen at westelcom.com